REYNOLDS RAP

There is a very profitable, job-creating, environmentally outstanding yet often overlooked side to the cannabis question. And while R.I haws and hems, other states are ready to reap.

I’m talking hemp – the B-side, the sober cousin, the multi miraculous weed that does not get you high but could do wonders for raising Rhode Island spirits.

Hemp, the non-THC side of the cannabis family has been used for centuries all over the world for its many and varied remarkable properties – as food source (more digestible complete protein than soy); as biomass fuel (cleaner and cheaper than coal, wood, or gas; as a building product (stronger than steel, malleable and moldable – hemp built homes are impervious to weather , more energy efficient, and self air-cleaning).

Hemp cam be used instead of most toxic petrochemicals and will soon be used to make biodegradable plastics.

Paper made from hemp does not require acid preparation, creates fewer chemical by-products, lasts longer, and can be recycled more times.. Hemp fabrics are stronger more durable than cotton – and require FAR fewer pesticides. Replacing cotton fields with hemp could drastically increase yield and eliminate 25% of the world’s pesticides.

Hemp is not only a quick and ecologically friendly crop to grow; Hemp actually cleans soils it grows in. Because of its structure, hemp is a fast and remarkable bio-remedial agent: it sucks up carbons and chemicals. Hemp has been used for years to clean chemical spills. It is now being used for land reclamation at both the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear radioactive disaster sites.

Our current ignorance about this multi-talented natural weed is yet another manmade, U.S. government deceit. In fact the founding fathers of the United States all grew hemp. During World War II the U.S. subsidized farmers to step up production. (watch Hemp for Victory, 1942).

But in the 1960’s hemp, cannabis sativa, got painted with the same bright neon-horror- red broad ( watch Reefer Madness) brush that marijuana, cannabis indica, was. To this day the United States is the only industrial nation not growing industrial hemp and classifying it ( with its 0.3&% THC ) as a dangerous schedule 1 drug.

Anyone with common sense – and even Republican Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and the conservative American Farm Bureau Federation wants the ridiculous prohibition lifted, classification status changed and hemp grown in the U.S.A. again.

Hemp is still being used in America to the tune of about $500 million dollars a years going overseas to import it. In fact, the U.S. government is now increasing its hemp purchases from the Ukraine as an agro-political humane gesture.

President Barack Obama opened university research doors to industrial hemp in February. Shame on us if we’re not in line to get in the game. Thirty-two states have hemp bills pending this year. Bills have already passed in ten (including Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine).

Hemp , or low-THC cannabis, is poised to become the preferred delivery choice for many medicinal cannabis uses and pharmaceutical companies are already manufacturing in Europe. We could be researching through Brown medical and manufacturing through URI’s pharmacology program.

RISD and Rhode Island artisans could be growing, designing, and processing textiles and fabrics from hemp, while the plant could be reclaiming the many brownfields created by former textile (and other) industries.